


Hollow Triumph

by took_skye



Series: Living For the Night [25]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, F/M, Implied Relationships, POV Female Character, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-03
Updated: 2011-03-03
Packaged: 2017-10-22 22:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/took_skye/pseuds/took_skye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Mayor Strauss doesn't get an expected gift she goes to find out why resulting in some interesting personal revelations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hollow Triumph

  
_Purple Lilacs: First love and the first emotions of love._

***///***

When they first started to come to me I thought it was strange, then I began to find it annoying; wondered if it wasn’t some kind of cruel reminder of all the terrible things I’d done to him over the years. That didn’t seem like him, but then the man always did have a darkness in him that he tucked away under patience and understanding and those quiet stares into space I sometimes caught him at. By the end I found it refreshing though, at least someone cared enough to send me flowers.

Whatever the reasons behind the yearly flowers it was deeply unnerving when I didn’t get them this morning. No lilacs sent to the house or my office. No mention of any missed deliveries at all. I don’t ask more than once though, preferring not to raise eyebrows or interest from those around me. Instead I simply take my lunch out on the town.

His bar is exactly as I remember it, the wood paneled walls, the occasional image of a red robin or yellow wagtail hung on the wall, and an overall ambiance that’s suited more for a private estate than a bar.

“Mayor Strauss,” his voice is calm as ever as he turns from the young lady he’s speaking to in order to address me. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“Cut the shit, Jason.”

Almost as irritating as David’s smirking formality is Jason’s near bowing formality. He has no reason to give it to me, he should be furious with me. He should want to hit me, destroy me, but instead he’s polite without even the slightest edge of anger. It’s like he doesn’t care, he never cared, but he has to…doesn’t he?

The bartender laughs a little. “Okay then, Erin, care for a drink?”

“Martini, dry.” I order as I go to sit before him at the bar.

He nods and goes to mix the drink.

“You’re the mayor?” The young lady Jason had been talking to speaks up with the tone of a smug teenager ready to stick to The Man.

I turn to her and give a small smile seeing just how young she really is now. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“They’re cleaning out asbestos,” the petite blond lies through her pretty little fangs. “I get the day off. Shouldn’t you be at a press conference talking about how great this city is while taking bribes on the side?”

I see Jason shoot the girl a warning look, but I hold up my hand to indicate it’s unneeded. I don’t require others to defend me, I never have. I smile softly at the blond teen who almost vaguely reminds me of myself at that age and speak bluntly. “I know life seems fun and I’m sure you get a lot for free right now, girly, but believe me when I tell that’s not going to last forever. One of two things will happen, either you’ll run on your looks until you’re too old or too used up by the world to be able to do so anymore and you’ll end up in the trash heap like most pretty little things in this town.” The girl’s brows raise, but she says nothing so I continue. “Or you’ll actually decide to use that brain I know is in your head and educate yourself. From there you can do anything you want and do it better than most. You’ll be able to control your own destiny and the destiny of others.”

“That so?” The girl smirks out.

“Believe me when I tell you, more than anything, an educated woman is a dangerous woman. And, personally, I’d rather be feared than loved.”

As Jason sets my drink before me the girl slides her way off her stool, still smirking. “Me too.”

“Then I suggest you get your thong-showing ass back to the classroom,” I reply before sipping the perfectly made martini.

The girl snorts. “You’re all right, but I still don’t like you.”

“That’s generally how it goes,” I reply calmly before watching the girl say her goodbyes to Jason and exit the bar. The moment she does I sigh, giving my full attention and disapproval to my old friend. “Really Jason?”

“It’s not how it looks, Erin.” Such a standard male reply, so unlike Gideon.

I sip then speak. “Funny, that’s just what David told me when I caught him with my college roommate.”

“Whatever happened to her, anyway?”

“Left town after a huge scandal involving her, drugs, and the lacrosse team.”

Jason’s chest moves in a laugh that never truly comes to pass vocally as he pours himself a glass of wine. It’s always wine with him; even in our youth it was wine. “I sometimes forget how dangerous crossing you can be.”

“Speaking of which…”

The man looks up curiously, stopping his pour and setting the bottle aside. He waits.

“Where are my lilacs, Jason?”

“Excuse me?”

“Every year, on this day, I get lilacs from you, but I didn’t today.”

Jason stops his sip of wine and follows his glass to look down at his hands on the bar. His fingers fan a touch as he shrugs. “I suppose I forgot.”

“You don’t forget, Jason.” I sip my martini once again. “I don’t forgive, you don’t forget.”

“You forgave Rossi.”

“Did I?”

Jason’s mouth opens to speak, but instead it lets out a sigh before he takes another sip from his wine. Finally, after a moment, he gives his confession. “To start it was to keep you from forgetting.”

“Forgetting?”

“Me…us…” he gives a guilty smile. “You’re right, Erin, I don’t forget. I don’t forget the times we spent growing up in the Heights, the first class election you ran and won, or that time you convinced a doorman we were all eighteen despite David still speaking in a falsetto.”

I give a small laugh. “Was that the same night that Dave thought he scored us the marijuana that ended up being oregano?”

“It was, indeed,” Jason laughs out.

“That was a fun night.”

“It was, indeed,” Jason repeats. “And I didn’t want you to forget those times either. As you took on your political persona you started denying where you came from –“

“Jason, I –“

He cuts me off right back. “It’s fine, Erin, I understand that you want to appear a certain way. Have to, even, to be as successful as you are. But I’m not going to lie and say it didn’t sting a little because, in doing so, you were denying some of the best times in my own life. I’ll even confess the flowers were to make you feel a bit guilty about that as well.”

“The flowers were unnecessary, I assure you,” I smile back.

“But that was only in the beginning, the first year or so. After that it was only because I wanted to keep in touch with you…” another open-palmed shrug. “You’re one of the few women I’ve cared about that’s still around.”

Alive. Jason means alive. With at least three dead by my count it’s like he’s been cursed in love or something; the only man I know who’s had worse luck is probably Aaron Hotchner.

“You know you could write or call, you could even visit?” Because there was never a true back-and-forth with us, it was always just the flowers.

Jason smiles like he did back on the streets we grew up on, before we knew where our lives would take us and still assumed the best. “So could you.”

“True, but I’m busier than you are.”

“And you wouldn’t want to bring up a potential scandal, either, would you?”

“You’re retired, where’s the potential scandal in us contacting each other?”

Jason’s hand goes to his wine and sips as he looks over the glass at me. He says nothing but I can read the look. It’s the same one he gave me after I suggested we see other people when he already knew I’d been with David the night before.

“You were losing control,” I state more aggressively than defensively.

The only reply I get is an arch of his brows.

I frown and look away across the bar as I speak. “There wasn’t anything I could do for you, the case with the blonds was the last straw.” My eyes snap up. “I mean, seriously, Jason, your friend was a serial killer.”

“Alleged.”

“Sam was convicted.”

“You want to debate the innocence of Sam when people like Foyet and Hawkes are now running the police department?” He asks the question with a smile, but his eyes show only frustration and anger.

For a while we remain silent, our eyes trying to bend one another to our will, before a customer calls Jason away. I take to my drink hard and fast and by the time Jason returns my glass is dry.

“You still haven’t told me why you didn’t send the flowers, Jason.” I’m stubborn; I want an answer from him before I leave. I’m also a little suspicious. “Does it have to do with the girl who was in here?”

“Do you want a refill?” The man sidesteps.

“No, I want an answer. An honest one.”

Jason seems to hold his breath in debate before letting it out. “Yes and no, Erin.” My disapproving face drives him to drink and continue. “I’ve been helping her with some issues she has and, it’s,” his shoulders raise, “taken up a lot of my time.”

I ask the question I have no right to ask. “Are you sleeping with her?”

“No.”

I want to say he’s lying, but I can’t. His truth is buried too deep to glimpse. Of everyone I’ve ever known Jason has always been the best at hiding…his thoughts, his feelings, the truth, himself. As much as I know about the man it’s likely only a quarter of who he truly is.

“You know what, Jason,” I go to stand from the bar, my lips refusing to perform the duties of a mayor and smile through the insecurity and pain, “I hope, whatever’s going on, is worth it to you, I really do.”

“Don’t you mean you hope this one ends better than the others?”

My eyes fall like the corners of my mouth a moment before I force them back up. “I’m not the enemy here, Jason.”

“Then who is, Erin?” It’s not a snipe or sarcasm on his part. It’s a genuine question that deserves a genuine answer.

“I don’t know. Our darkest impulses realized, perhaps?”

“What do you suppose that looks like?”

Finally, for no reason aside from the fact they can’t slip any lower, my lips begin to pull themselves up. “Probably something like this.”

Jason nods some as his attention turns to cleaning off the evidence I was at the bar.

***

Back at the office, between the meetings and press conferences, I sit in my office and think. I think about the times David, Jason, and I had together before our personal desires got the better of us, before teen impulse and twenty-something arrogance told us what we were doing had to be right even if the fallout killed us. How happy we were, the three of us, before our roads diverged and we took the ones less traveled by.

Now each of us is broken, a mashed up version of what we were and what we wanted to be. We got everything that we thought we wanted and lost everything we didn’t know we needed. We live with it, smile through it, but I wonder if any of us are truly happy now?

***

The day ends in being dropped off at my doorstep by the car service. It’s raining, or I’m crying, as I work my keys into their locks. Something desperate within me wants to get inside and stay there under a cloud of blankets and the reddest wines available. I swear I can smell that distinctive perfume through the door, through the fog of years gone by, through the exhaustion of self-reflection. That haunting reminder Jason sends me every year.

The flower smelling of the sweetest parts of my youth that I traveled down into my past to request lies atop my mail in the foyer. Not the usual bouquet of purple though, just a single selection of white lilac. My smile comes with a flushing of my face. I wipe my eyes, go to lift the small bushel to my nose, and breath deep.

***///***

 _White Lilacs: Youthful innocence and humility_


End file.
